Well, that was disgusting!

I was in the barn last night, topping up water buckets for the goats. I checked the buck's pail for "berries" and saw a dead rat floating in it. So . . . I hauled it out, went outside to dump it and poured off some of the water, so it wouldn't be so heavy to carry to a good spot. I see another dead rat! I poured some more water out, and there was a third dead rat in the bucket.

Makes me wonder how many more of the buggers I've got in the barn. :grump: Those kittens better get working or I'll take them back as defective.

Please tell me your secret!! If I could get 3 Rats in one night without a shotgun and a spotlight I'd be in heaven. Evening intertainment for us is shooting the dumb young ones off the roof of the old shack that was here when we bought the place. Planned to use it for storage but so did they!!!. Dave & Chris in NE Washington State

I'm in Northern Ontario and we are having an outbreak of rats in town. It's made the front page of the local paper the last two weeks.

I dislike mice and rats are enough to make me completely loopy.

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Several years ago when we were still on LI, we had an outbreak of mice. They were EVERYWHERE! Even the exterminator across the street and my clean freak friend next door (with 3 cats!) couldn't get rid of them.

Even at church, you would be praying at the altar and glance down and a little church mouse would be sashaying by!

I wish I had the right kind of gun to blast the bugger that keeps coming and going out of our house. We've had a trap set for almost five days now and the rat by passes it and goes into my bedroom to rip of my socks I've took off that day. I'm missing a pair of socks (taken one night) and one sock from another pair (taken the next night). :grump:

Blasted rats! I don't know how the critter is coming and going in and out of the house.

You might try putting two water buckets out for your goat. Rats seem to follow a rat smell trail and might not go into the other water bucket... then again... who knows. You might have a better rat trap.

I wish I had the right kind of gun to blast the bugger that keeps coming and going out of our house. We've had a trap set for almost five days now and the rat by passes it and goes into my bedroom to rip of my socks I've took off that day. I'm missing a pair of socks (taken one night) and one sock from another pair (taken the next night). :grump:

Blasted rats! I don't know how the critter is coming and going in and out of the house.

You might try putting two water buckets out for your goat. Rats seem to follow a rat smell trail and might not go into the other water bucket... then again... who knows. You might have a better rat trap.

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somewhere along your foundation there is probably a crack or a hole where he gets in. the may also be a hole in the wall behind a piece of furniture. they don't need much of a crack or hole to get in and out.

I wish I had the right kind of gun to blast the bugger that keeps coming and going out of our house. We've had a trap set for almost five days now and the rat by passes it and goes into my bedroom to rip of my socks I've took off that day. I'm missing a pair of socks (taken one night) and one sock from another pair (taken the next night). :grump:

Blasted rats! I don't know how the critter is coming and going in and out of the house.

You might try putting two water buckets out for your goat. Rats seem to follow a rat smell trail and might not go into the other water bucket... then again... who knows. You might have a better rat trap.

We've had a bad rat problem this year, too. And I mean RATS--big 'ol rats! First they were in the calf barn and around the dog kennels. Ramik bar bait works wonders. It's sort of expensive, but it works.

Not by me, they're not! I would never put poison down, with goats, kittens and free-range hens. I've got two little Nigerian Dwarf doelings who can squeeze out of their pen, and the kittens can get anywhere too. I can't see that they'd come all the way from the neighbours just to drink out of my buckets - there's a couple of creeks between us.

You might try putting two water buckets out for your goat. Rats seem to follow a rat smell trail and might not go into the other water bucket... then again... who knows. You might have a better rat trap.

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Four goat pens - four water buckets. Plus rainbarrels and rain bathtubs. I think the rats have enough choice.

Hey, I already invented a better mousetrap - take a 5 gallon pail, put about an inch of oats in the bottom. Mice jump in to get grain, can't get a grip to jump out - take cat and hold him so he can grab the mice!

Even with all those critters, you could still use bar bait poison. The thing is, you just have to put it in something that the rats can get to, but the animals can't. Example, you could nail the bar bait to a stick of wood and put it in a 4" diameter pipe, at least a yard long. The rats can't hoard it to a place that the animals can get to--they have to eat it on the spot. That diameter pipe ought to be small enough that the kittens can't squeeze into. Now goats, I don't know much about goats. You might have to be more creative to put it somewhere they can't get into. But bar bait is great because you can nail it to something or string it on a wire, i.e., secure it in place so it won't go places you don't intend it to.